Take a spoonful of sugar, add a pinch of chemicals that accumulate in fatty tissue, and voila, metabolic syndrome! So while Dr. Lustig may be on to something, it looks like fructose might not be the only thing to blame for the obesity epidemic.

The reason why persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are a problem is that they can bioaccumulate in fatty tissue. (If fructose causes metabolic syndrome as Dr. Lustig says, and metabolic syndrome results in increased obesity, which in turn means more fatty tissue, and more fatty tissue can absorb more POPs, we would seem to have started a rather vicious cycle.)

The Editor’s Summary explains why the findings of this study are especially important (emphasis added).

The authors conclude that exposure to POPs through a diet high in fatty fish is capable of inducing insulin resistance and impairing both lipid and glucose metabolism. Furthermore, they found that n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids failed to counteract the harmful metabolic effects of dietary POP exposure. This finding is important because the presence of n-3-polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish oil has been reported to have a wide range of beneficial effects, including protection against high-fat diet–induced insulin resistance. The authors conclude that there is a need to continue efforts to limit human exposure to dietary POPs even in foods containing protective factors such as polyunsaturated fatty acids.